Genuinely, thank you both for the suggestions. I’m just wary of falling down the YouTube rabbithole - I refuse to even log-in to the damned site. , so if I start watching one of them it’s going to have to be one I can remember the name of to search ;-).
(I thought Facebook was a bad idea from the get-go and never signed up, quit Instagram when FB bought them, quit Twotter when that asshole bought them… Lemmy and (sorry to say) Reddit are literally my only social media, and I question both of them fairly regularly. I do not claim to be normal ;-).)
The only reason I make an exception for Yahtzee is that having had a Steam account since Half-Life 2, Steam nevertheless remains comically bad at recommending games I’d be remotely interested in. Yahtzee’s reviews I often don’t agree with, but they do at least give me a hint of things I should check out.
CentipedeFarrier@piefed.social 1 day ago
Thats a super fair stance.
Consider looking into something like freetube (pc, there might also be apps for android that do the same, I don’t know) Its logged in as an anonymous account so you can subscribe to stuff, but you can go into the settings and disable all the distractions, which is what they call everything thats not videos :) All I ever see is stuff from my subscribed channels, and if I go into the individual channels, the only thing that remains is the main videos feed, everything else (about, shorts, community, etc.) is disabled. I also have sponsor block enabled to auto-skip all promotional content including self-promo.
The algorithm is basically non-existent on freetube, in that your recommendations feed on the side of the video player is going to be mostly the same channel you are watching now, not just random shit. Maybe a few things thrown in that are closely related -like if they work with another channel a lot that other channel might come up- maybe some weird bug videos that aren’t related at all, but those are all semi-sciency so that could be from my own watching, idk, I think the dev included some basic channels for the main feed so it wasn’t empty, they don’t really change and I’ve had other people mention seeing the exact same videos in their feed, years apart. I haven’t seen much, if any, questionable or undesirable content without explicitly searching for it, though.
I find the distraction-free mode of using it to be very much like back in the day when you had to know what you wanted because there was no algorithm. Its not addictive or changing my opinions, imo, because I genuinely struggle to find new channels, what with no algorithm shoving shit down my throat, so I get what I’m looking for and nothing else. I check it a couple times a month, quickly run out of new content, get bored, and go do something else. Perhaps thats a workable option for you, as well :)
timochka@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Thank you! I see it has a Linux version, so I will genuinely check that out - as soon as I get home. (As I write I’m waiting to board the first of 13 hours or so of flights - that’s why I happened to be checking out gaming reviews yesterday ;-). I’m hoping the 7th Guest remake will keep me sane…)
CentipedeFarrier@piefed.social 1 day ago
It does! Both linux and windows versions work very well, though I discovered on ubuntu that you can install both an app store and a .deb version and they will be entirely separate instances. Wild! And confusing for noobs when updating!
Fly safe friend! That sounds miserable! Hopefully it is travel for a fun reason, at least.